Birthdays and anniversaries are a matter of perspective.

When I was twenty-one, part of celebrating my birthday was to consider the adult I was (hopefully) becoming, and the journey unfolding before me; there were promising comments about aspects of my developing character, and where my path might take me.

When, more recently, I turned sixty, people affirmed the journey we had walked together, in various stanzas. There was a strong sense of established character – for good and otherwise – and the resources I had with me for the journey yet to come. Part of the celebration was acknowledging where I had been, as well as the future.

They give praise for God’s gifts of grace to each of them in years past;
they acknowledge that none of them has responded to God’s love with a full obedience;
they look for a continuing renewal in which God will use
their common worship, witness and service to set forth the word of salvation for all people.

Looking over our shoulders at what has been is a labyrinth into which many of us wander, and we can be lost there. The lure of what we remember, the scent of nostalgia, can be deceptive, inviting us to live when “things were better”.

Then, rather than looking over our shoulders, we turn and face the past, deciding that is where we want to live. Nostalgia becomes narcotic; things are only right when they look and feel like they did then.

There are disciples in every faith tradition, every congregation, who wish things hadn’t changed, or that everything could return to how they remember things feeling at that best moment. That is not our vocation.

Our Uniting Church, being a younger faith community than many others, has an affection for our anniversary, as we wind our way to the half-century. We have the mixed blessing that many of us remember our beginning, whereas our celebration of the Council of Nicaea – 1700 years this year – encounters different, and more diverse, reflections.

My grandfather was one of those keepers of the gate as the Uniting Church was formed in the fifties, sixties and seventies. However, his model of gatekeeping, like so many of our grandmothers and grandfathers, was to open and unlock as many of the gates as possible so that the uniting churches would be formed for the current times and the future, and not only be shaped by the past.

To this end they declare their readiness to go forward together
in sole loyalty to Christ the living Head of the Church;
they remain open to constant reform under his Word;
and they seek a wider unity in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Across the Church, we have become easily enticed by orderliness and structure, by measurable mission outcomes and risk registers, by loyalty to our benefactors, and thus reinterpreting, or even eschewing, our discipleship to Christ.

We endlessly plan and reflect, when we know where our birthright and our future truly reside. On occasion we even look for excuses, or escape clauses when we mis-speak of mission, or theology, rather than the rigour and wonder from which those terms arise, and into which they lead us. 

To whom does our Church belong, in its multiple sizes and shapes? Is it to all those faithful people who have worshipped and witnessed and served over the life, and previous lives, of our Uniting Church?

Not for a moment. We belong to Christ.

The Basis of Union reminds us that we do not belong to history, we do not belong to our past, we do not belong to Scripture; we are Christ’s, entirely. It is in Christ we know ourselves, and the future into which Christ calls us.

In entering into this union the Churches concerned are mindful that the Church of God
is committed to serve the world for which Christ died,
and that it awaits with hope the day of the Lord Jesus Christ
on which it will be clear that the kingdom of this world
has become the kingdom of our Lord and of the Christ, who shall reign for ever and ever.

Blessings for our years ahead, under Christ.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. [John’s Gospel 14.15-17]

There is a conversation in one of my favourite books of fantasy, first read in late childhood, and many times since. At the crux of the story, at the frontiers of death, the hero meets the anti-hero; they engage in a battle, at several levels, but first simply in identity.

What is life? Power.

What is love? Power.

What is light? Darkness.

What is your name? Where is the truth of you? … You have forgotten much, you have forgotten light, and love, and your own name.

Jesus has arrived at the crux of his life, washing the feet of his disciples and sharing a meal with them, knowing that one he serves will betray him in a few heartbeats’ time, another will deny him, and the rest abscond in fear.

Here is the truth at the heart of Jesus, that despite betrayal and denial and cowardice, he loves and serves, remaining faithful.

Right now, as always throughout history, despots from right and left are seeking to reconfigure truth to serve themselves. War is peace. Love is power. Darkness is light. Control is service. Lies are truth.

How easily we forget what these words mean. How tired we become with unrest, or protest, and move to silence and even resignation, then compliance. And our memories lapse.

Like scripture, anyone can quote Orwell to their own ends, but that is not this conversation. There is enough written and spoken about the tyrants of this generation, if we wish to find it.

I would like us to look elsewhere, at some of what Jesus has said, these few words in the moments before he steps towards the cross.

The measure of our obedience to Jesus is neither subservience nor fear. It is love. Our discernment of truth, engendered by this Spirit, this breath of God, is determined at the gauge of love.

These words of Jesus, as I mentioned above, are in the context of his friends’ betrayal and denial, not the security of a monarch, unassailable. They are not found in a theology which defines itself in convenience and safety, whispering comfort in the ears of the one who holds power, however ephemeral. They are spoken to remind us of what we have forgotten; where life and truth and love are truly found, where forgiveness is the gift we embody.

The glory of God in Jesus Christ is discerned on the cross, first and forever. There is the truth of God, to which the Spirit bears witness, and into which we are led. The truth of God, where sacrifice for our broken world, and solidarity with our woundedness are how God in Christ entirely comes, and addresses, each of us and all creation.

In a world, in a community, in a Church, which too easily forget, how shall we bear this witness? How shall we speak when the songs have been laid aside and the words misremembered?

There is cacophony in which we live and move, in which we must find our way and encourage people – each other – to remember. However, it is not in our hands.

We rely on the breath of this Spirit, who urges and guides, who advocates, who enables us to remember both our calling and the One who calls us.

Dare we inhale?

I am like a flag in the centre of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.
I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their head,
The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? … in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” [Acts of the Apostles 2.5-13]

This moment of ignition for Christ’s disciples, often proclaimed in a more genteel manner as the Church’s birthday, will be celebrated around the world in the coming week.

There will be conversations with children in worship about wind and fire, with some risky experiments from lay scientists and engineers, attempting to create a moment which will (hopefully!) “command attention and awaken faith”. Candles, cakes and red material will abound as congregations acknowledge the story which sparked our Church’s purpose.

In the story, gathered disciples, wrapped in wind and baptised by flame, begin to speak in a plethora of languages, into a marketplace filled with people from across the known world. The story of God is proclaimed and the crowd astonished. They hear Peter preach the gospel and they come to faith in great numbers.

I ask your indulgence to consider a further wonder. Is it possible that in our obsession with utterance – preaching and podcasts and pundits and pronouncements – that we miss the anointing of the Spirit upon those who hear, those who listen to what is said? Does the wind simply anoint the speakers, or are the listeners similarly blessed?

I ask, because I remain unconvinced about our (my) capacity to pay attention to those whose voices need to be heard. We are quick to speak, to offer an opinion, to establish ourselves; how willing are we to shut up and listen?

What does it mean for disciples of Christ to attend to those whose voices are traditionally silenced, or ignored, those whose voices are simply not loud enough above the surrounding cacophony? What about those voices with which we simply cannot be bothered?

He is sitting at the pool, waiting for an opportunity for healing; she is tarnished with the name unclean, desperate enough for life that she finds her way through the crowd. He sits at the gate each day, as the rich man steps over him, unwilling even to offer a crust. She visits the well in the midday heat, condemned to isolation by a label too easily assigned.

Jesus finds them, and they discover him, and life.

He dies in a supermarket, with no explanation as to how being subdued by police extinguished his life. No explanation necessary, apparently, no voice at all. Nothing to see or hear, here. No attention paid to a life less valuable, and too easily silenced.

Pentecost always follows closely on National Reconciliation Week, which is, for me, both a blessing and a reminder of my calling. I was deeply saddened when we voted to silence The Voice last year, as an indication from so many that we have little desire to listen to the voices of our First Peoples, to pay attention to what they need to say – to us.

Many of us felt willing to offer an opinion on the lives of our sisters and brothers, to comment on their circumstances, or their future, but neglected to attend to any story they might tell. There is always the sneering, cynical voice from one corner of the room, suggesting there is nothing worth hearing, that “they are filled with new wine”.  

However, if we listen, what might we hear? What deep wisdom, or challenge, or forgiveness? What might we need to change, to heal, or what injustice to address, or relationship to build, or grief to share at what we have failed together to achieve?

What if the breath of the Spirit is calling us to attend to those who are first in our nation’s story, yet to whom we have so frequently allocated the last place? What if we hear young women and men prophesy, and elders dream dreams of life?

Dare we ask the Spirit of the risen, crucified One to move in our Church?

Say your life had crumbled
with its wonder.
Say
that you had opened
to the spring wind, all of you
resounding with its power.
Say the days
had changed you
into this.

Listen, now. Unbroken choirs
are silent.

Lie down
like these old stones in the darkness.

I promise you
your life is not in ruins.

And if it is,
if all of you is ruined,
listen
to the cold wind in the open.

The truest
and most beautiful part of you
is the ruins through which mystery can sing.

The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.  Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.  About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.                               [Acts of the Apostles 16.22-25]

A young Warlpiri man, arrested in an Alice Springs supermarket for shoplifting, dies in police custody a few hours later. The authorities “pass on their condolences”.

A Palestinian doctor learns that eight of her nine children were murdered by an Israeli airstrike hitting their home. The Israeli Defence Force is “investigating the incident”.

Two Jewish men, Paul and Silas, in Philippi, a Greek city under Roman rule, set a woman free from spiritual – and perhaps physical – slavery. They are arrested, stripped, beaten, shackled and imprisoned.

So, they pray, and sing praises to God.

What faith is this, which sings God’s praise in the darkest cell? What hope is this, which holds when the wounds from our beating are still fresh and our feet are chained?

This has not been an easy week for our Congregation. People we love have died; even as we are thankful for their gifts to us, we grieve their deaths, and our sense of loss. We will care for their families, and for ourselves. Our faith in Jesus, embroidered in our prayers, in our singing and our action, will help us find our way.

I am not sure what capacity for faith the young man’s mother, and grandmother must have in Yuendumu, when the police release his broken body to them. What song might they sing, apart from mourning?

What primal sounds will an Arab mother make at the death of her children? What song, guttural, or ululation, will she raise, if she is able to make any sound at all? I cannot imagine such loss, and the anaesthetising grief with which it is accompanied.

Songs of mourning I begin to comprehend. The communities of Gaza and Yuendumu – amongst many others, now and throughout history – have become accustomed to unjust, sudden death. The “sorry business” journeys of our First Nations communities can sometimes seem almost interminable, as is the generational trauma in which the Palestinians find themselves.

Disciples of Jesus know what it is to sing hope, and praise. When we gather for worship, we remind ourselves of who we are and the One to whom we offer our worship, witness and service.

Do we know what it is to sing defiance and prophecy, to proclaim protest in our song? When Paul and Silas “sang up” the earthquake, foundations were shaken, all chains were broken and prison cells opened wide. Do we imagine they were singing a lullaby to help them sleep? Or were they proclaiming a God who has created the earth, defeated death and saved creation? Is the object of their worship the One who will not be prevented from loving us, who commands us to live justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly, each and every step?

Perhaps we might, instead, sing our songs in parliaments and councils and the streets, and in places where all light and justice appear to have been extinguished. We might sing to politicians and ambassadors that civilians and children are never targets, whatever the infected discourse we bend to our excuses. We might sing of the flawed beauty of each person, their inherent value in the heart of God and, therefore, ours.  

We can sing of One who has died, unjustly, and been raised for everyone, even those who cause the brokenness – on every side.

If I sing Christ’s song of hope, perhaps I will find my name within its lyrics – and my life.

One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”     [John’s Gospel 5.5-6]

There he is, on the edge of the picture frame.

As the story takes shape, he lies there, not quite noticed, because he’s part of the furniture. Not the furniture of which anyone takes account, but like the old lounge that mum, and her mum before her, used for spare, if someone, uninvited, stayed the night.

Pushed into the corner. Draped with a dust cover. Just in the corner of your eye.

Like many in the Jesus stories he does not warrant a name, unlike the Sheep Gate, and the Beth-zatha pool, where he has been since before Jesus was born.

Presumably, over the decades, someone has brought him food and clothes; perhaps there are those who offer charity, but not enough companionship to help him move towards healing.

Jesus lifts the dust cover and asks him, ‘Do you want to be healthy?’

So accustomed is he to finding reasons, even excuses, for not being well, that his reply echoes all the other accusations, theologies and stereotypes he has endured. Like the Samaritan woman in the last chapter, they are tattooed into his life.

Thirty-eight years of suffering ends in one sentence from Jesus. No words of thanks, or blessing. Sabbath means not rest for him, but restoration. Shalom indeed.

Then they discover him. Those who ignored, or blamed, or labelled him in the past, the ones our own Manning Clark would certainly have labelled “straighteners” – the punishers of life.

Healing? Be blowed. Sabbath is no time for life and restoration. We know this story all too well; he is only worth their attention when they have something to gain, or some pound of flash to be carved off.

So, why was he there for a lifetime? Did his parents, or siblings, place him there in hope, or despair? Why didn’t they wait long enough to escort him to the pool? Was their compassion – and that of others – exhausted entirely?

Is it possible that his identity, from time and blame, was his illness and nothing else?

We know the answers to none of these questions. We wonder, though, whether he moves from knowing who he is – labelled, disabled and dismissed – to not knowing, now that everything has changed, a lifetime identity transformed.

Is there something in Jesus’ question? “Do you want this?” is something more searching than compassion, perhaps. It is taking someone who has been placed out on the edge of the image, and focusing on them. “Do you want health?” is asking him to reach for more than despair; sometimes despair is the story to which we have become accustomed, and we even believe that might be all we deserve.

The wonderfully ridiculous scene of the “ex-leper” in Python’s Life of Brian, captures this beautifully. Who am I now, if I can’t beg?

We can become content with our circumstances, blaming others, or even ourselves with our inability to find a solution and move on. Healing can be frightening.

And then Jesus.  

Dare we risk ourselves with this Jesus, who will forgive, and heal, and renew? Do we want to be made well? Jesus calls us forward, and his love invites us to imagine – and live – a life shaped by his compassion and mercy, and not by our past.

Do you want to be whole?

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”                 [John’s Gospel 13.34-35]

When we read scripture, one of the cardinal rules is context – location, location, location, as the roadside signs proclaim.

[Momentary Excursus: There was a monstrous (by every definition) sign for a temporary political party in the recent federal election just past Bendemeer, on the way to Armidale and its impact appeared minimal, in terms of votes gained. Perhaps it’s about more than just location…]

If we are careless, we will lift this extraordinary paragraph of Jesus’ words and ignore the path before and behind him. We do this at our peril.

Jesus has just washed the feet of his disciples, shared a meal with them, and Judas has walked into the night. The next moment, Jesus talks about loving each other, which is how people will know that they belong to Jesus.

Immediately, Peter falls into the frame, proclaiming his courage and loyalty, which last less than a few strident heartbeats.

Shortly, Judas’ betrayal will bear its malign fruit, and Jesus will be arrested and taken to the cross.

Jesus’ commandment to love each other describes the core of discipleship, bracketed by betrayal and denial. This is the essence of what Jesus offers – to love in such a way that people are drawn to Christ. When we realise that we are asked to love (and wash the feet of) those who might betray us, deny our relationship, or even cause us harm, his commandment weighs more heavily than the winsome chorus many worshipping communities will sing this weekend.

This week I attended a rally in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and Gaza in particular. Muslims and Jews, Christians, atheists and agnostics, we gathered in a local park. I turned to a disciple beside me, and asked what resolution looks like – what reconciliation looks like – in Gaza and Israel, especially now.

We pondered together, sadly.

This is the context in which Jesus’ command is placed. Not simply loving those who love us, but loving those who betray, deny and defile. And Jesus is definitive: loving in such way is evangelical. Loving in this way proclaims worth and value and hope, and the One we follow.

Loving in the way we are commanded, in the way Jesus loves, transforms those we love, and transforms us.

It is easy to find an enemy, to name and accuse them, and to settle into retribution. That is neither who we are called to be, nor how we are to live. In a world scarred by generational injustice and understandable anger, we are called to discern both how love calls us to act and speak, and to discern what love might offer, reconcile and make new in our community and our world.

We walk in the steps of Jesus, knowing first that we are loved by One who will never cease to do so.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff –
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.

The lilt of the music which accompanies this most-famous of psalms, can mislead us. We can easily be captured by the movement of the tune, as we lift our eyes to glimpse the conclusion, wrapped in hope.

The heart of the psalm is concerned with the troubles with which many of us are beset in the world around us. The struggles of our life, the dangers which cause fear, and those who seek our harm; all of these are present as the psalmist asserts their faith in God.  

Which is precisely why the psalms have been essential to faith and life for three millennia.

These are not the self-focused and simplistic words of someone who is dealing saccharine to those in need of substance; neither are they “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology which never pierces the surface of our lives, let alone people’s suffering.

The psalmist asserts that faith has us confronted by our enemies, walking in dark places, but then, equally asserts the reality of the presence of God in all these circumstances. Unlike so many modern worship songs, the centre of this psalm is not me, and how I feel, but God, and God’s accompaniment of me at every step.

The psalmist – and thus, we – finds their place because God is with us. This is each of us as sheep being shepherded, as disciples being led to life, throughout our life.

There’s a depleted version of faith, which indicates that this life is only valuable because eternity awaits us. What happens here does not carry any real weight. This is such an insubstantial understanding of our lives, of those we love, of those we serve.

Throughout history we have watched those who are called to be shepherds failing in their task, often deliberately.  At this moment we can see wolves, not even pretending at camouflage, rending those who are most vulnerable and disregarding those who cry out on their behalf. These are shepherds who betray their calling.

What will it mean for us to emulate the One who has shepherded us, and continues to do so? If we are truly disciples of this God, we will lift our voices (our rod and staff?) and risk ourselves to protect and comfort those who are most threatened, who spend their lives in dark valleys.

A trusted colleague reminds me that God’s goodness and mercy not only follow me, but the text has its origin in the word “pursue”; this is a God whose goodness and mercy seek us out consistently and for eternity.

Hope is the faith to assert that God is with us, even in the worst season, not watching from the ridge of the valley, but walking every step beside us, perhaps half a pace ahead.

In Christ, our hope is realised; this God, this hope, this life. God with us.